This is a new application for the Annual Summer Symposium of the Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Council of the American Heart Association. This conference has had continuous support from the NHLBI for the last 8 years and last year was funded with the grant number of R13 HL078309. Support from the NHLBI has helped foster a meeting that has become the go to conference dealing with molecular cardiovascular biology and disease. It represents its sponsor, the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences of the American Heart Association, which is the world's leading organization of cardiovascular scientists. This conference started originally two decades ago as the Council held a Molecular Cardiology conference in 1991 and then had several meetings initially hailed as the Snowbird Conference as it was held during the summer at Snowbird, Utah. The meeting became an annual event in 2002 and since 2004 this conference has been recognized as a permanent, recurring scientific meeting of the AHA and R13 funding also commenced. The conference in recent years has begun to mix in translational topics as well as the bread and butter of this meeting, which is basic molecular cardiovascular research. The conference has always attracted the leading researchers in fields such as microRNAs, cardiac gene and cell therapy and mitochondrial regulation. The attendance of this conference has climbed every year and last year (2011) the conference held in New Orleans had an all-time record attendance with 534 registered attendees. As in past years, the conference will be held in July and will once again be in New Orleans. The planned agenda represents an ambitious, fast-paced meeting with 14 sessions over 4 days (July 23-26, 2012). This year the meeting will be held at The Hilton New Orleans Riverside and have 2 high-profile Keynote lectures given by Dr. Eugene Braunwald and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka. Young cardiovascular scientists will be highlighted as well through invited talks in each session and Posters will be presented on 3 days of the conference. Organizers of this meeting are Drs. Yibin Wang (UCLA), Annarosa Leri (BWH, Harvard) and Roger Hajjar (Mt. Sinai). The proposal request constitutes approximately 7% of the total meeting budget and as over the last several years, support from this application will be used toward Cardiovascular Outreach Awards (minority travel awards) and New Investigator Travel Awards. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This proposal is for support of the annual conference of the Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Council of the American Heart Association. This meeting meets every July and is attended by basic and translational cardiovascular scientists where scientific exchange in this field is at its highest level. This meeting and those like it can accelerae discoveries pertinent to new therapies for heart disease, which are greatly needed. This meeting is a great learning experience for junior scientists and trainees and thus, optimizes the future return of investment in medical research by public dollars.